


although it's been said (it's always worth saying again)

by darcylindbergh



Series: things fairy tales are made of [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Growing Old Together, M/M, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 18:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13172955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: It’s the chins, John thinks, that makes Sherlock so endearing like this.*One Christmas of many.





	although it's been said (it's always worth saying again)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Хоть это было сказано (всегда стоит повторить еще раз) (Although it's been said (it's always worth saying again))](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14526327) by [PulpFiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PulpFiction/pseuds/PulpFiction)



> yfip me posts christmas fic two days after christmas. happy holidays, y'all! thanks leslie for the fly by readthrough!

It’s the chins, John thinks, that makes Sherlock so endearing like this.

He would never tell Sherlock that, not in a million years, but John loves each and every one of Sherlock’s chins. They’re like a secret Sherlock carries under his jaw, waiting to bunch themselves into existence with every burst of laughter and every seductive look, and the sight of them spilling into being makes John’s chest ache with fondness.

Outside, it’s snowing, and a hush has descended upon London. The night has slipped away from them between glasses of scotch and conversations that are half-banter, half-confession, and as Sherlock and his chins chuckle lowly into his tumbler, John thinks he’s never been so in love as he is right now.

He sets down his glass and gets to his feet, a little unsteady and overwarm with drink and affection, and holds his hands out to Sherlock. “Let’s go to bed.”

Sherlock’s face cycles from surprise to shyness to suggestive, creases he didn’t have ten years ago flaring outward from his eyes, from his mouth, and he takes John’s hands and presses a kiss that’s mostly smile into the palm of one. “All right.”

*

There’s something special about Sherlock in the wintertime.

John thinks that maybe it’s his dark curls and his pale skin, and the way the winter winds tousle and flush. Or maybe it’s how he stays in his pyjamas more often, his long, bony feet bare on the sofa cushions and on John’s shins under the covers, or maybe it’s the way he looks in front of the frosty windows, with the gleam and glow of fairy lights and a low-burning fire dancing along to his violin.

Maybe it’s just that they met in the wintertime, and it feels magic and fated and miraculous to look at Sherlock and see how far they’ve come, to see the stretch of years and distance and every time they’ve turned away only to find themselves turning back, reaching toward. Inevitability, like the turn of the seasons. Undeniability, like the set of the stars.

Sherlock breathes hot onto John’s neck, makes a noise like puckering his mouth into a kiss.

“Good morning,” John whispers, sliding his hand up Sherlock’s spine. Sherlock only snuffles and relaxes deeper into John’s side, and John wonders at how different things become every day. How much softer; how much more certain.

“Mmmm,” Sherlock hums back. He shifts, settles one leg in between both of John’s so he can get closer. “Morning.”

Sherlock-in-midwinter gets like this sometimes, more so than any other Sherlock: quiet in a way that is more contendedness than sadness, in a way that reminds John that there had been a time when Sherlock had not been able to imagine a future like this for himself. He holds Sherlock closer, hoping he can hear the beat of John’s heart in his chest. Hoping he can hear the truth in the beat of it: _I love you I love you I love you._

*

There’s a radio playing somewhere in the sitting room, and even though there’s sunlight streaming in the windows, Sherlock has plugged in all the fairy lights and lit a fire in the grate. Lionel Richie is singing that he’s easy like Sunday mornings, his voice smooth and light. John doesn’t really know what that means, or what the song is about, but he backs Sherlock up against the worktop and sings the chorus into Sherlock’s jaw while Sherlock laughs, and then John kisses him.

They make tea and toast; John hems and haws for a while about how he should make them a _proper_ breakfast, something hearty and real and traditional, but Sherlock only kisses him with an orange marmalade mouth and tells him to either shush or get on with it. John nudges his foot under the table in indignation, but they’re both grinning, because they _can_ and they _are_ and they _do._

“Arse,” John says, fondly, and Sherlock wiggles his bum in his seat as if to agree, and they laugh.

John never does make the breakfast. Instead the Beatles sing that here comes the sun, do-do-do-do, and Sherlock moves John around the sitting room with one hand on his waist and the other clasped in his, laughing in that way that isn’t really laughing because it’s funny but rather laughing because he can’t not be, because he’s happy and he’s in love and he’s at home with someone who loves him too, and John laughs that same way, right along with him.

*

They don’t have a tree. There’d hardly be room for one in the flat, what with the way Sherlock takes over the available space, so instead Mrs Hudson helped John drape faux pine boughs over the bison skull’s horns and over the mantelpiece and they called it a day. It’s really the fairy lights that do the trick anyway.

It’s one of John’s favourite things, spending a day together like this: without anywhere to go, without anywhere to be. The need for danger, the thirst for adrenalin, has not faded, but it’s changed: John no longer needs the excuse of fear to justify his touch, and Sherlock no longer needs to save John’s life to justify his confessions.

They are simple, now, and easy, and comforting, and John revels in how _natural_ it is to love Sherlock like this, like he’d never done it any other way.

The presents sit in a small pile on the desk—Sherlock’s inexplicably done up in gift wrap with a repeating picture of a trout, and John’s done up in copies of crime scene photos, just for laughs—but there’s no rush to get to them. Maybe tonight, John thinks.

The anticipation of them curls warm in John’s belly.

*

It’s gone midday before Sherlock begins to fuss. He flops dramatically onto the sofa, then gets up and rifles through a stack of papers, then _too_ entirely casually starts digging through various hiding places, ostensibly looking for a lost pen but John’s well aware that he’s never kept a pen in those Persian slippers. It’s a poor lie, and one probably intended to make John take notice of what a poor lie it is, but for a while John’s content to watch Sherlock heave himself around the flat in search of something he’s definitely not going to find.

Eventually Sherlock turns his attention to John and puts on the biggest, saddest puppy dog eyes. “John.”

John hums. He’s half-heartedly reading the paper, which is to say, he’s reading articles that look like they might relate to interesting crimes or possibly to new restaurants that might entice Sherlock’s picky appetite—so far, nothing good.

He’s definitely not interested in getting Sherlock’s emergency pack of nicotine patches out, not when Sherlock’s been doing so well without even those. He’s not even vaping anymore, though admittedly that’s more because he looks like a prick when he vapes than anything else.

“ _John_.”

“If you’re bored,” John says absently, “you might try checking your inbox. Tidying your papers. God, you could even wash your glassware, if you’re so rough up.”

“I’m not _bored_ ,” Sherlock mutters, but he settles into the sofa in a pout, so John knows he was right. He turns a few pages of the paper, scanning headlines, but he can’t concentrate on it anymore with Sherlock curled up around himself like that. Even though he knows it’s just Sherlock putting on an act to get his attention, it still tugs at his heartstrings and invokes every promise John made to himself about Sherlock when he first leaned in and brushed a kiss over the corner of Sherlock’s stunned mouth, standing on the front step in the pouring rain.

 _Still_. Even after all these years. John hasn’t forgotten his promises; he hopes he never does.

He finally gives in. He folds the paper up and leaves it in his chair, and goes to sink his fingers into Sherlock’s curls. “Why don’t you come get in the shower with me,” he suggests, a sly grin in his voice.

“Are _all_ your ideas going to have to do with sex?” Sherlock asks, and John doesn’t have to be able to see his face to know he’s rolling his eyes.

“Probably. What good are bank holidays if not for spending the afternoon in bed?”

“We’re self-employed,” Sherlock says dryly. “We don’t observe bank holidays. We could spend any day we wanted in bed together.” But he tilts his head up for John’s kiss and follows him into the bathroom nonetheless, shedding his pyjamas on the floor on the way.

*

John loves showering with Sherlock.

Sherlock, for all his vanity and all his elegance, is somewhat awkward about his body when he’s undressed. Not in the sense of how it looks—though in the early beginnings, he was as self-conscious and insecure as anyone else would be when getting naked with someone for the first time—but more in the sense of its unpredictability. Bodies, as John could tell you, do all sorts of weird and unexpected things at weird and unexpected moments, especially when rubbed up against another body, and Sherlock had woefully underestimated the full range of human possibilities.

It’s less obvious during sex, of course—having something to _do_ with a body certainly helps to focus the issue of what to do _next_ , and Sherlock’s never lacked for enthusiasm—John’s been very careful, on that score—but in the shower, in a moment of what’s usually a utilitarian practice with no mind for how things _feel,_ Sherlock flounders a bit with where to put his hands, with the unusual sensation of wet skin pressed against wet skin, the press of bellies against bellies without the go-between of sex. It makes John feel incredibly protective and gentle at once.

He fits his hands around Sherlock’s waist, pulls him forward a little into the spray of the shower. “C’mere,” he says, and Sherlock goes, haltingly, flushed from his navel to the tips of his ears. “All right?”

Sherlock nods, his eyes focused on John’s hands as they soap up a washcloth. John washes him slowly, piece by piece—fingers, palms, wrist, forearms, elbows. The lines of his collarbones, the notch at the base of his neck. The spread of his shoulders and the jut of his hips and the length of his thighs. _These are all the places I love_ , John thinks, and he washes Sherlock everywhere.

When he’s done, Sherlock soaps up the washcloth again and washes John with it: chest and stomach and hips and calves, hands and feet and the small of his back. They each wash their own hair, taking turns standing under the spray and shivering just beyond the reach of it, and then Sherlock pulls John to him, presses their stomachs together and slides his arms around John’s neck until it doesn’t feel strange anymore, and then he sucks the water off John’s neck and kisses him until they’re both panting in the steam, one pink, blurred shape in the fogged up mirror.

*

John kisses the dip of Sherlock’s hip, the inside of his thigh. They’re both still damp, sticking a little to the sheets; the afternoon light catches on all the water droplets, makes them look like beads of honey. “All right?”

“Yes,” Sherlock breathes. He shifts, his hands running slowly over John’s shoulders, through his hair. “I—John.”

It’s like this, sometimes: slow and fast at the same time, too much and too little, and when John pushes into Sherlock, much, much later, they both have to stop and breathe, to hold each other’s faces in their hands and press kisses to the insides of wrists. To try to find a way to saying _please_ and _I never thought_ and _forever_ without embarrassing themselves.

It doesn’t matter; they both see right through each other. John thumbs away the tears on Sherlock’s cheeks, and Sherlock laughs at himself, because _God,_ it’s been _years_ , how are they still like this? And John hushes him and kisses him and whispers that possibly they’ll always be like this, a little bit, and possibly that would be okay.

“I don’t even know why I’m doing it,” Sherlock says, laughing at himself again.

“It’s okay,” John says, and he laughs along with him, the feel of it ricocheting through their chests, pulsing from one body into the other and back. “I feel it too.”

*

Afterward, they lie on their backs side by side, sweat cooling and breath catching, nudging their knees together and holding hands.

“Did you ever think,” Sherlock says, his eyes closed, head tilted back and his hair mussed half to death from being rubbed back and forth along the pillowcases, “did you ever think it would be like this?”

John watches his profile, silhouetted in the late afternoon light, the line of his nose, the curve of his satisfied smile. He thinks about what he thought he expected of _this_ : a house in the suburbs, two point five kids and maybe a dog, working some dull nine-to-five and then coming home to a wife he could never picture.

He never _actually_ expected that, though. Not really. Not if he was being honest with himself.

What he expected was loneliness.

“No,” he says finally, with an unexpected rasp in his throat. “No, I really didn’t.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer. He rolls onto his side and pulls John by his hand, pulls him into his arms, and holds him until their whispers turn to giggles again.

“I love you,” Sherlock whispers, nipping at John’s jaw, pressing kisses to his eyelids and his earlobes. “I love you.”

*

They get up hungry, and Sherlock digs out a takeaway menu for the Chinese round the corner. He takes forever with choosing—John knows he finds the menu itself just as intriguing as the food, the way things come in different sizes, the descriptions that sometimes say the exact same things yet deliver two entirely different dishes—but eventually orders far more than they’d be able to reasonably eat before all the leftovers went off.

John has a particular fondness for Chinese takeaway. It was the first meal they ever ate together, he and Sherlock, all those years ago. They’d gone to a Chinese restaurant round the corner and gotten their order to go, then gone back to Baker Street; Sherlock had held John’s hands in both of his as he’d washed them with a soapy solvent to get the gunshot residue out of his skin, making sure to scrub under John’s nails as the food got cold.

The food this time, at least, is hot: egg rolls and crab rangoons and dumplings, sweet and sour prawns and black pepper beef and chicken with broccoli and pork fried rice. They drench everything in little packets of soy sauce and eat right out of the containers, sprawled all over each other and the sofa with their duvet from the bed as they channel surf crap holiday movies on telly, making fun of Tim Allen and Arnold Schwarzenegger in turn before finally settling on an old eighties version of _A Christmas Carol_ , which they both remember from their childhood as being much more compelling than it seems now.

Sherlock steals bites from John’s chopsticks and eats his own portion with a fork, even though he insists he’s perfectly capable. John loads up extra bites of broccoli for him to take, and he cuts John a look that says, _I know what you’re doing,_ but he takes them anyway.

They put a bigger dent into the food than they really ought to be capable of, and then they lay back on the sofa and drift and doze, John’s hand tucked halfway down the back of Sherlock’s pyjama bottoms, Sherlock’s tucked up under the hem of John’s shirt, curled onto his belly like a pair of knobby cats.

When John wakes up, Sherlock is curled most of the way into his lap, the telly is playing a Bill Murray version of _A Christmas Carol_ , and they’re both sweating under the duvet. He kisses Sherlock’s face until he moans and groans and bats John away. “Time to get up, sleepyhead. Help me put this food away.”

*

John is scratching his back, waiting for the kettle to boil, when Sherlock hands him a long thin package wrapped in white paper with fish on it. He kisses John’s temple, stands behind him and rests his chin on John’s shoulder. “Open it.”

Outside, night has moved in with thick, black skies and smoky clouds. The flat is lit only by fire and fairy lights, glowing and flickering with warm ambers and golds, and Sherlock is entrancing as he watches John carefully rip into the paper at one end.

Inside the paper is a black box, and inside the box is a key.

John lifts it out from its bed of tissue paper: a small, plain, unassuming gold key, very like the key John uses every day to open the front door to Baker Street. His heart is suddenly pounding; his stomach soars. He turns to look at Sherlock properly. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s smile is—different. It’s hope and trepidation, uncertainty and joy and faith all wrapped into one. “I didn’t know what to get you,” he says slowly. “And when I thought about all the things you had, and all the things we wanted together, all the things neither of us ever thought we’d have. And I thought about this.”

John looks down at the key, runs a thumb over the teeth, laughs with nervous anticipation. “And this is . . . ?”

“It’s a promise,” Sherlock says. One of his hands closes around John’s free one, and he steps in closer, closer, watching every fleeting nuance of John’s face, probably watching more of John’s thoughts than John even knew he was having. “We’re going to grow old together, John Watson. I promise.”

John laughs again. “We’re _married_ , Sherlock. I was planning on it.”

Sherlock laughs too, blushing beautifully along his cheekbones, but some of the tension eases out of his frame in exactly the way John predicted it would. He shrugs, half-bashful and half-incredibly calm. “I bought us a house, John.”

The larger part of John is not surprised: Sherlock has, after all, been particularly midwinter-ish lately, awfully secretive about his phone calls and his e-mails, so John had known that there was a secret going on. He’d assumed that whatever it was, Sherlock would tell him when he was good and ready. And Sherlock had.

John just hadn’t anticipated a _house_.

John giggles, and his giggle turns into a laugh, and his laugh turns into something big and loud and brilliant, and he wraps his arms around Sherlock’s waist and lifts him, twirls him around their kitchen. “Sherlock, you bloody madman! A _house_?”

“A cottage, really,” Sherlock says, giddy with exhilaration, and John puts him back down. “Out in the Sussex Downs. You’re going to love it, John, it’s got everything—a study and one of those enormous inglenook fireplaces you like so much, and wildflowers and fruit trees, and we could have a dog, and the bedroom’s on the main floor so when we get old and bent and frail you won’t have to climb the stairs, and a big tub we can sit in and soak for hours, and—”

John kisses him, can’t not be kissing him any longer. Kisses him with the laughter still bubbling up between them, making everything a little bit sloppy; kisses him with every hour of every day of every year they have yet to live somehow fresh and beautiful on their lips, passing between their mouths like old-fashioned love letters, like handwritten confessions put down for everyone to see.

“—and we’ll keep Baker Street, of _course_ ,” Sherlock continues, as if picking up the thought right back where John had cut him off, “because obviously neither of us are ready to leave London, won’t be for years I expect, but we’ll be able to make everything in Sussex just to our liking before we need it, and we’ll take weekends and holidays of course, and there’s a guest room for Mrs Hudson, and—”

“Sherlock,” John says quietly. He can’t stop smiling. “I know.”

“You _know_?” Sherlock sputters. “How can you know? I haven’t told you everything yet.”

“Because I know you. And you know me. And if you were mad enough to buy us a house without asking my opinion on it, you must have driven yourself around the bend trying to think of every last little detail about it, didn’t you?” John laughs again. “You must’ve have driven yourself batty with trying to anticipate everything. So, yes: I know it’s perfect.”

This time, it’s Sherlock that kisses John, and it feels like _thank you,_ and it feels like _I love you_ , and it feels like home.

*

“I think I’ll keep bees,” Sherlock says, much later, when the fire has burned down to a single red-crackled log and they’ve migrated down to the rug in front of it, using the duvet and every pillow and blanket they could find to make a haphazard nest on the rug. A new silver-grey smartwatch shines in the half-light from Sherlock’s wrist; the engraving on the band  says _you carry it for me, bumble - John xxx._ He’s not wearing anything else.

John strokes over his shoulders, down his ribs, hums into his hair. “You want to raise bees in your retirement?”

“I don’t really know,” he says, with that faraway sound in his voice that means he’s somewhere between here and somewhere else, caught in a thought with only one foot left in reality. “I never thought I’d retire—never thought I’d live long enough. I never dared to dream about what the rest of my life could be like.”

John hadn’t either. He hadn’t dreamed about life after the army, or about life after the bullet, or about life after Sherlock. But that was the funny thing about Sherlock—there was always more to him than John expected there to be. There’s always more life in him—quite literally—always more adventure, more curiosity, more of the _Sherlockness_ that makes him Sherlock.

There’s always more love, and when John looks at Sherlock, he finds that there’s always more love in _himself_ , too, more than he expected to be capable of giving. He’s not surprised now that Sherlock was the one who looked at the two of them, looked at their lives together, and thought to think of something _more_ than what they have now, something _after_.

He nuzzles down into Sherlock’s hair, presses a kiss to his temple. Sherlock’s a warm, heavy, relaxed weight along the line of his body, a little sweaty where they’re pressed together, and John thinks he’s never been so in love as he is right now.

“What do you think, then,” John says, closing his eyes with a smile on his face. “What do you think the rest of our lives might be like?”

Sherlock kisses John’s chest, then carefully presses a deliberate kiss to his mouth. “Dunno, but whatever it is, I think it will be wonderful.”

 

 


End file.
